New Models

Deep internet A-listers Holly (@holyyyycow) and David Yoakum (@davidy) join NM for the only podcast about Remilia Co.’s ill-famed PFP NFT project you actually need to listen to. From 4chan to Kali/acc, Charlotte Fang to Ryder Ripps, we bring you this niche history so you can judge for yourself how the social web is re-aligning in 2022. Plus: new aesthetics, young girls, and Urbit x No Agency devir...

Cultural savants Shumon Basar (The Extreme Self & The Age of Earthquakes) and Dean Kissick (NY editor of Spike Art Magazine) join the show during Berlin Art Week for a sprawling, late-night convo on communication and creative production in year 2022.
 Along the way, we note the accelerating pace of decades, revisit Marshall McLuhan’s 1967 mass-media glow-up, log a veritable dictionary of neologism...

NM speaks with Kevin Driscoll, author of The Modem World: A Pre-history of Social Media (Yale Univ. Press, 2022), which examines the physical — and social — technology that underpinned the DIY side of networked technology’s evolution in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Parallel to institutional network culture were the proto-dark-forest communities of BBS networks and other pre-www systems. From FidoNet to De D...

Scholar of media studies and Chernobyl expert Svitlana Matviyenko joins us from Kamyanets Podilskyi, Ukraine to discuss critical infrastructure security and the imminence of cyberwarfare.
 On this episode, Svitlana, who is also the co-author of Cyberwar & Revolution: Digital Subterfuge of Global Capitalism (U. Minnesota Press, 2020) gives an expanded definition of “cybernetic warfare” and what she...

One of the great millennial club demons, DJ and producer Dances With White Girls (aka Frog) talks to NM about the ever evolving relationship between artists and platforms, from Hollerboard to TikTok. We also talk how AI music software is changing the game, pop-up scenes, and PLUR black tie. Plus: Frog’s 12 Rules for Club Life. Twitter: @dances New Release: Repopulate Mars presents The Arrival Subs...

Writer and researcher Sam Moore speaks about his new book, with Alex Roberts, THE RISE of ECOFASCISM: CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE FAR RIGHT (Polity, 2022), which finds, in the dissolution of pre-millennial frameworks for climate, capital, and governance, conditions that are ripe for the re-emergence of fascist formulations of power. We talk to Sam about the interface between humans and the natural worl...

As Ukrainian forces enter a third week of fighting off Russia’s full-force invasion, artist VOVA VOROTNIOV reports from Kyiv, sharing details from life in the city during wartime, a primer on corruption (both bad and "good"), and what terms he sees for possible resolution (spoiler: Russia go home). Image: Vova Vorotniov, Kyiv, 8 May 2022 For more: IG: https://www.instagram.com/vovavorotniov/ Teleg...

NM Special Report: Digital Resilience & War w/ Cade Diehm On this episode, we speak with information security specialist CADE DIEHM of New Design Congress regarding digital infrastructure resilience in a time of network upheaval as the world responds to Russia’s escalation of the war in Ukraine. For more: Tw: @helveticade https://newdesigncongress.org/en/

Continuing our context-focused Ukraine Special Reports, we speak with New Models member @pdthorn, whose career path includes working with Open Source Intelligence. OSINT both describes a field of research and its diverse range of publicly available information sources. As Russia has escalated its war in Ukraine this week, OSINT — particularly the constant drip of on-the-ground social media updates...

Fashion critic and Interview magazine Senior Editor TAYLORE SCARABELLI speaks to New Models about the much-reported Indie Sleaze revival, sharing insights on its physical re-emergence in IRL NYC. Read Taylore’s related essay in Interview's March print issue (and via link below). Intro monologue: “Indieverse” by LIL INTERNET, co-written with Carly Busta. Outro music: SLUTTT x Passions "Dead by 25"...

Anastasiya Osipova, a scholar of Soviet and contemporary Russian Culture at the University of Colorado Boulder and co-founder of Cicada Press, speaks with NM from Kyiv, sharing her first-person insights on the Ukrainian/Russian border conflict as well as what the prospect of war does to one’s ability to communicate clearly, and how that shift impacts a society over time. Recorded in 2 parts: Jan 2...

Norwegian artist BJARNE MELGAARD speaks to New Models about his foray into the cryptoverse with his first NFT project, Lightbulb Man — which, in true Melgaard-form, touches the limits of trust in a so-called trustless system. For more: https://lightbulbman.com/

In this monologue, Lil Internet ponders the rise and rise of the BADDIE—past, present, and future—and whether the metaverse will render the Baddie Body Industrial Complex obsolete, or open a golden gateway to Baddie transcendence. For more LIL INTERNET radio plays and all New Models content, join https://patreon.com/newmodels and check out our new project, https://channel.xyz

In which we speak with writer/critic NORA KHAN and artist/writer JOEL KUENNEN about deep time, rethinking the human in an era of accelerated machine learning, and recognizing the truly experimental in a culture increasingly bound by “aligned incentives.” The conversation took place at La Becque artist residency on the shores of Lake Geneva, where Nora and Joel have been developing two new books an...

Over the past year, speculation has surged beyond business media to emerge as a broad-spectrum cultural theme — think Gamestop, Robinhood, tokenized communities, the rise of NFT art. Reflecting on this phenomenon, NM speaks with the gonzo art world/ art market reporter behind @jerrygogosian, artist HILDE LYNN HELPHENSTEIN as well as MATTHEW CAPASSO, formerly of Christies and now director of Fairch...

We are joined by the guardian angel of New Models' digital presence, designer and developer JON LUCAS. With clients ranging from PIN-UP magazine to Bjarne Melgaard to SOPHIE (†), Jon shares with us reflections on his practice at large, as well as the origins and future of https://newmodels.io For more: jon-l.com @jonlucaswebites

Artist and composer ADR (Aaron David Ross) stops by NM on the occasion of his new album, Filter Failure and launch of his label with Gatekeeper partner Matthew Arkell, Legendarium. Reflecting on his past decade of cultural production—see: Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems, Grant Singer’s iconic 2012 cult short, IRL; collaborations with Dis, Kelela, Lafawndah, Mykki Blanco, Ryan Trecartin, Telfar, Korakr...

NY/Paris-based creative director Katharina Korbjuhn speaks to New Models about the launch of PARADIGM TRILOGY, a new publication crystalizing the gap between the legacy fashion/media sector and the post-digital — and even post-individual world — its audiences increasingly inhabit. For more: @katkorb @paradigmtrilogy http://www.paradigmtrilogy.com/ https://www.katharinakorbjuhn.com/ New Models GREE...

Theorist BENJAMIN BRATTON joins NM to discuss his newest book, The Revenge of the Real: Politics for a Post-Pandemic World (Verso, 2021), which reflects on human society’s capacity for sensing and calibrating to the the vicissitudes of an increasingly turbulent Earth—and innovatively governing in turn. In this first segment of a two-episode release (Pt. 2 forthcoming for NM subscribers), Bratton t...

On this Ep, NM is joined by *Civilization* publishers Lucas Mascatello and Richard Turley, as well as *Highsnobiety* Editor-in-Chief, Thom Bettridge to discuss “SELECT YOUR CHARACTER,” the style-centric site and media brand’s latest white paper, which explores the overlap between gaming, fashion, and realms of the real. Created in collaboration with Mascatello and Turley, the 136 page doc looks at...

Architect and writer KELLER EASTERLING joins New Models to speak about her recent book "Medium Design: Knowing How to Work on the World" (Verso, 2021), which invites us to expand our thinking about infrastructure from one of discrete things to the messy, polyvalent relations and conditions they share. Along the way we touch on the potentials of Web3 and ramifications of small changes at scale. / T...

This episode is being jointly released by JOSHUA CITARELLA & NEW MODELS following a period of research on the status of cultural institutions and the future of post-Web2 creator communities. A New York based artist, Josh also has a podcast, a Twitch stream, and a Discord community (Josh’s Super Secret Sleeper Cell). He’s been a guest on the New Models podcast twice and joined us last year for a pu...

"HELLO DARKNESS" is an essay by New York-based writer DEAN KISSICK about the changing social media and media landscape of 2021. It is presented as part of "Shadowlands," Season 1 of Stolbun Institute. https://stolbun.institute/seasons/shadowlands/hello-darkness Dean Kissick is the New York Editor of Spike Art Magazine. https://twitter.com/deankissick https://instagram.com/deankissick Stolbun Insti...

Before there was Instagram, there was Mark Hunter, AKA, THE COBRA SNAKE, who made his name photographing the alt party scene of the ‘00s and relaying this coverage to his blog before people’s hangovers could even hit. In turn, thecobrasnake.com, along with American Apparel and Vice, became canon for high hipsterdom. For older Millens, it also came to represent an era when signs, language, and soci...

What creates VALUE in ART and what makes art actually valuable over time? Why are some images powerful while others, just expensive? Why did DAN buy a Twerky Pepe? On this ep, we speak with writer and art critic ANDREW RUSSETH about the closing of NYC GALLERY METRO PICTURES, its generational importance and how it emerged during a media shift that in many way parallels our own. Plus: BUFFET HACKING...